I recently read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I am now one third through Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. In common they are large books which not only tell a story, but describe a whole society. That is all they have in common.
Infinite Jest is a near future dystopian satire about addiction. The book itself is addicting, not matter how much I wanted to, I could not put it down. It is best described by a comment made about Richard Wagner by Gioachino Rossini, an Italian composer. "Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour." The book drags, but it has inspired sections that are imprinted in my mind. In one a woman who attempted suicide describes her suicidal thoughts to her therapist. This has special poignancy because the author, who spent his whole life fighting depression, later committed suicide himself. In another section, Wallace describes the origin of the wheelchair assassins, a Canadian terrorist group all of whose members are legless. No I did not make the last sentence up.
Anna Karenina never drags but I have to resort to a list of characters to keep track of them. Tolstoy gets slow at times but is never painful to read.
It reads, at least in the Maude translation, beautifully. He is a wonderful interpreter of the human condition, Unlike Infinite Jest, the characters are multifaceted and subtle. I am told, that on each re-reading, the reader can draw different conclusions about each character. One article says that while we tend to concentrate on Anne's tempestuous love, which leads her to abandon her social position, family, child and finally [ spoiler alert ] commits suicide, we should look at Kitty and Levin's level headed love.
As I said, I am only 1/3 through. Stayed tuned.
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